The truth is that when you are organized and clean, you feel better! You know where your things are and you feel in control of your Environment. In order to “be organized” or “clean” you just have to give a little more effort and start to make these actions a habit.

There are several habits that organized people do & do well. It allows them to lead lives that are more productive, successful & less stressful than their unorganized messy friends.

Here are the 11 things they do to stay “organized” and they are little things that you can do too!

#1. A place for everything and everything in its place #2. Start and End-of-Day Rituals

It is Earth Week and I wanted to address this issue of why should a person (like my 65 year old Mom) change from using over the counter cleaners to “green cleaners”? Are the chemicals in these cleaning products like 409, Spic and Span, Windex and many other common cleaning products really that harmful in your Home? The argument might be, they have been in our Homes for generations, Why Change Now? It just seems like a lot of work to “Go Green”.

Well, actually, it’s really not all that hard.

Have you ever noticed how when you clean with these over the counter products that the smells are very strong? I have and I’m sure you have as well. Do you ever get light headed cleaning with these products and have to turn on the bathroom fan or open a window to air out the smell? That was my issue with over the counter cleaners. I have allergies and am very sensitive to smells so this would always happen to me when I cleaned. You actually don’t really even notice that much of a difference until you actually start cleaning with these “All Natural” Environmentally friendly products.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has one of the most compelling reasons to switch. They say that many of the Household Cleaners today contain Volatile Organic Compounds or VOC’s such as formaldehyde and harsh acids. Since these compounds are often 2-5x greater than their outdoor counterparts, people can experience “eye, nose and throat irritation; headaches; loss of coordination; nausea and even damage to the liver, kidneys & central nervous system”.

Many of these Volatile Organic Compounds have caused cancer in animals and some are suspected, as well as known to cause cancer in humans. Most of our modern chemical cleaners are “quite simply, overkill” says the nonprofit group, Children’s Health Environment Coalition (CHEC). Most of the time we can use milder and more natural chemicals to do the same jobs as these over the counter cleaners.

If you want to learn more about the Chemical Industry and how unregulated it is, then check out the Netflix move “The Human Experiment” and it will explain how many of these Chemical Companies have gone unregulated in the past because of Corporate
Greed. Companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Dow Chemicals, and more. So, if you have allergies or just want to live a Healthier Life inside of your Home, here are 5 Ingredients that you could use to make your own Cleaning Products.

Here are my Top 5.

#1. Vinegar-(I hate the smell, but it is very effective) This is a anti-fungal that also kills germs and bacteria.It is great in Bathrooms and on carpets when you have to get out a Pet Urine stain. Combine half vinegar with half water and spray. Then once it’s drying, add the next ingredient on my list an allow it to dry. Then vacuum up.

#2. Baking soda-This product eliminates odors and works as a gentle scouring powder on just about any surface. I’ve used it in the bathroom as well as in the kitchen. Sometimes it leaves behind a white residue but that will come up if you use enough water to remove the salt. Use this after the vinegar and water solution to eliminate the odor.

#3. Liquid castile soap-(Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds Biodegradable Cleaner) is my favorite! This is an all-purpose cleaner, grease-cutter & disinfectant. “Castile” means that the soap is
vegetable-based not animal-fat based. For example, the Dr. Bronner’s is made of coconut fatty acids.

#4. Pure Essential Oils– These are all natural organic oils that come from plants. The oils are taken from the pressed plants and flowers. This adds a wonderful scent to your cleaning as well as some of these oils have anti-bacterial, anti-fungal or insect-repelling properties. For example Tea Tree oil is a Antibacterial agent as well as anti-fungal. It is great to use in Bathrooms & Kitchens. I combine a few drops of Tea Tree Oil to my Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds solution and then add water. This is my favorite All Natural General Cleaner. Other essential oils that have these properties are Lavender, Peppermint, Eucalyptus, Lemongrass, Rosemary and Basil.

#5. Hydrogen Peroxide (3% concentration)-This is a great nontoxic bleach and stain remover. Have you ever used it with Baking Soda to whiten your teeth? You can also use it to clean with! It is a wonderful disinfectant for the Home.

There are many other Natural Cleaners that I did not mention such as Lemon juice, Club Soda, Olive Oil, Corn Meal, Borax, and others. If you do decide to “Go Green” with your Cleaning Products this year, your Body & Family will Thank You!

If you have any questions you can Email me at green_clean_avalon@live.com or give me a call. I hope this article has been Helpful and Happy Earth Week 2016!

So this is going to be a little bit of a weird blog post, but I think it’s important to talk about. When a person dies, there are basically 2 options today…right? Burial or Cremation. Well, lets dive right into what that really means.

Burial: Basically you preserve your body and it costs almost 10K and then leaves the toxic chemicals of formaldehyde, methanol & other solvents behind after your gone.

Cremations: Here you cook your body for a few hours at 1800 degrees where it releases soot, carbon monoxide, trace metals like mercury into the air. Also the act requires 28 GALLONS of fuel and releases 540 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. That’s a lot. Releasing 540 pounds of CO2 is like having 41,040 Cars!

Obviously, none of those options are ideal for us Greenies. Luckily a company called Infinity Burial Suits is using mushrooms to decompose bodies naturally. They give the deceased a body suit which cleanses the body of toxins before returning it to nature and the human body is full of Toxins! We have hundreds of toxic pollutants in our bodies like pesticides, preservatives and heavy metals (mercury & lead). after death, the mushrooms consume both the body and the toxins within it. The company has designed a body suit with thread infused with the mushroom spores. Basically, the suit eats your body, leaving behind a clean, pollutant-free compost. Wow!

This invention is the creation of two designers: Jae Rhim Lee & Mike Ma. During the development stage, Lee tested various types of mushrooms which are known to clean up toxic environments. She fed them her own hair, skin & nails (ewwww!) and selectively breeded the ones that best consumed them. Next she designed a body suite with Thread that was infused with the selected mushroom spores.

It’s a weird concept and Lee & Ma know many people may be uncomfortable with it but she also thinks people need to come to terms with their own inevitable demise. In 2011 she and her colleague were invited to TED Talks. As she watches the mushrooms grow and digest her body, she can imagine the Infinity Mushroom as a new symbol of thinking about death and the Environment. After six years in development, the Infinity Burial Suit is coming to our market in the Spring of 2016. The first user will be Dennis White, a 63 year-old suffering from primary progressive apahsia, a rare neurological disease.

The first real world example, Dennis White never thought I never thought about death until I was diagnosed, and I want to go out with a bang, like I’ve lived most of my life.” White said in a documentary. “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” And for White, the trip will end shrouded in mushrooms, as his body is going back to the Earth and not emitting harmful chemicals or emissions. Now that’s leaving a Legacy! Now, how do we order one of these bad boys?🙂

Rate this:

Quizzes are all the rage today. There are even quizzes to determine what kind of quiz you are. Sure, you know which Game of Thrones character, style of kisser, and Ninja Turtle you are — but do you know your modern eco breed? If not, we thought we’d help you figure it out (because quiz-makers obviously know yourself better than you do).

If you found your way here, we’re guessing you have at least some sort of green inclination. But in the 21st century that no longer has to go hand-in-hand with things like sanctimony and guilt — environmentalists now come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. Maybe even some ones that you wouldn’t expect.

Are you an unquenchable activist that everyone awkwardly pretends not to notice while you’re out canvassing? A tech-loving futurist churning out pie in the sky ideas? An eco yuppie happily buying into everything green, so long as…

How do I remove hard water deposits in my bathroom, like in my shower, toilet, & bathtub?

Acids help to remove hard water deposits. Some acid cleaners help remove discoloration from aluminum, brass, bronze, and copper. Other acids remove iron rust stains. Acids are typically found in toilet bowl cleaners, rust removers, metal cleaners, and kitchen and bath cleaners that remove mineral products. Here are some solutions you may try…

White vinegar, a weak acid, is about 5 percent acetic acid. It may remove hard water deposits from glass, rust stains from sinks, and tarnish from brass and copper.

Lemon juice, another weak acid, contains citric acid, which can be used in much the same way as vinegar.

Oxalic acid is effective as a rust remover.

Phosphoric acid is often found in cleaning products that remove hard water deposits.

Hydrochloric and sulfuric acids are sometimes used in diluted concentrations in toilet bowl cleaners.

Rust stains present a special problem on plumbing fixtures. Commercial rust removers contain oxalic acid. If you purchase oxalic acid at full strength, dilute it with 10 parts water. Follow all precautions when using oxalic acid, as this is a highly toxic product. A commercial product like ZUD may be effective on rust stains because it contains oxalic acid. When surfaces have become rough or pitted from repeated scrubbing with an abrasive cleaner, ZUD or a similar product may be mixed with water to form a paste and left standing on the stain for several minutes, then rinsed off. (I don’t recommend ZUD products. They are very concentrated & the ones I’ve tried I did not find to be environmentally friendly. They are usually a quick fix cleaning product which does not lend to being friendly to the Earth. If they aren’t then prove me wrong.)

For fixtures that are not acid resistant, clean with trisodium phosphate to remove the rust. Cream of tartar, a mild acid, may be mixed with water to form a paste rust remover.

My best friend Lauren R. asked me this question today & I wanted to provide her a proper answer. Great question by the way! All the products that are “earth friendly” I have indicated in bold. I’m sure a lot of other “green friendly” people in the webosphere wonder the same thing.🙂

Rate this:

Okay, so I own a Green Cleaning company and I have been getting mixed messages from customers
about using the chemical bleach. It is very irritating to the eyes and respitory system after using
Shaklee cleaning products for the past year and a half, but for some reason; I still enjoy cleaning
with it.

If I want something to get REALLY clean, I know that bleach will do the job. Not in every situation,
but in some cases when nothing else will work, bleach is my go to chemical. I use it in the bathroom
mainly and sometimes in the kitchen.

Sodium hypochlorite is the active ingredient in chlorine bleach.

It is found in household bleach and many other disinfectants. When you mix bleach with ammonia or an
acid, it will causes the release of chloramines, which generates hazardous fumes and is part of the reason the Environmental Protection Agency has found indoor air to be twice as polluted as outdoor air. Sodium hypochlorite reacts with ammonia, drain cleaners, and other acids. Many household products state that
they contain bleach on the label. Pool chemicals frequently contain calcium hypochlorite or sodium hypochlorite,
and should not be mixed with household cleaners.

So where is ammonia and acids found in the home. Ammonia can be found in glass and window cleaners, animal or human urine, in some paints. Acids in the home are more common. Products that contain acids are vinegar, glass and window cleaner, automatic dishwasher detergent & rinses, toilet bowl cleaners, drain cleaners, lime, calcium and rust removal products and brick & concrete cleaners. Bleach also reacts with some oven cleaners, hydrogen peroxide, and some insecticides.

So what are the hazards to watch out for with bleach? Well, for one, if you have kids in the home under
age 5. Make sure you have it locked away where they cannot access it. Bleach was the product most commonly associated with the injuries (37.1%) according to the most recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine and the most common diagnosis was poisoning then chemical burns and lastly dermatitis or conjunctivitis.

Children are naturally curious so if they see a brightly colored spray bottle they’ll want to see what it does, right? Which is why keeping harmful chemical cleaners like bleach up high and marked as dangerous is imperative.

A 2008 study published in Environmental Science & Technology by Dr. Mustafa Odabasi indicated for the first time that sodium hypochlorite or bleach and the cleaning agents (known as surfactants) react within the product to create chlorinated volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The study says these chlorinated compounds are released when we clean, that most of them are toxic and probable carcinogens and that the indoor air concentrations increase anywhere from eight to 1,170 times during the use of products that contain bleach.

The increase in chlorinated VOCs was lowest for plain bleach and highest for thick liquids and gels. What matters with bleach are the amount, strength and method of exposure to it.

Sodium hypochlorite is also used to purify our drinking water and is a mighty powerful disinfectant. It is a reactive chemical that it will degrade before long, and if it dries completely, you’re left with table salt. The
chemical formula for bleach is NaClO.

So, my main point is, bleach is okay to use in the home for specific purposes and it is okay if it is diluted. The main thing is to be careful not to mix with with ammonia or an acid. If you have children in the home, make sure to lock it up or put it up high where children under 5 cannot get to it. A little bit of caution and common sense goes a long way with this strong & powerful cleaning agent.

=========================

11/10/12

Okay, so this is a continuation of the blog post. I have been researching this issue and I don’t think bleach is all that bad. We just had some pressure washing guys come to our house and clean our driveway, sidewalks, etc and I did a cleaning test with them. We used my Basic H organic cleaner and did a spot test. We added water and it seemed to get some of the dirt out of the sidewalk but would take a lot of scrubbing. Then the guys added a spot test of bleach and added water. The bleach water immediately bubbled up and brought the dirt up to the surface. It also turned yellow and changed colors unlike my basic H & water. After 10 seconds it was easy to see who was the clear winner of the dirt test.

So that being said, is there anything really toxic about bleach to the environment? Is it toxic at first (acidic) and then becomes more basic as time goes on? I guess I really need to speak with a chemist about this. The chemical composition of Bleach is NaCl…right? So that is Sodium and Chloride if I remember correctly from my High School Chemistry class. I know Sodium is not toxic, what about Chloride or Chlorine? Okay, so if anybody knows the answer to this question please answer this blog post.